High Holy Days by Jane ShoreEssay Preview: High Holy Days by Jane ShoreReport this essayVictoria SlagleAP English and CompMrs. AndersonOctober 4, 2018Faith and Doubt        The poem “High Holy Days” by Jane Shore, follows a young Jewish girl who is at a service. The girl is depicted to be picked as the “Chosen One” during the service. This is depicted throughout the poem by diction, tone, and imagery.         Diction is used throughout the poem to help us understand the emotions of the girl as the poem progresses. At the beginning of the poem, the girl doesn’t understand fully why she at the service and is bored. Shore opens the poem with, “It was hot. A size too large, my wool winter scratched.” to show readers that she was more concerned about her coat than what was going on around her. Once we discover she is at a service, her disinterest is also shown by her descriptions of the people around her. The specific detail used to describe them shows us that she is more concerned with them than she is with the Rabbi and the service. However, the diction used shifts once it is assumed that she is the “Chosen One”. This is shown by the nose bleed she gets during the service. The choice of a nose bleed shows the sacrifice and most likely blood shed she will go through by being the so called “Chosen One”.         The tone in the beginning of the poem is very disinterested and bored. This goes along perfectly with the speaker’s boredom and disinterest in being there. However, there is also a curious tone a little further on in the poem when she does start to take notice in service and becomes more curious about her religion. The main tone switch occurs however, is when it becomes noticeably more serious. This is when she gets the nose bleed and accepts that she will be the one to protect her community from any dangers.
The imagery used in the poem helps us put together everything that is going on around the girl. It helps us put together an image of the synagogue with the description of the broken windows and the men and women that sit around her. We are also able to picture when the young girl gets the nose bleed with the lines, “I felt faint. I breathed out sharply- my nose splattering blood across the page”. We are also able to put together an image of her at the end of the poem leaving the service as if being guided by God in the last few lines of the poem, “As if God held me in His fist, we stepped out into the dazed traffic of another business day- past shoppers, past school in session as usual”.          Throughout this poem, the author uses diction, image, and tone to help us readers understand the main idea from the story. With the help of those 3 devices we are to understand that the young girl accepts the fact that will be the “Chosen One” for her community.
I don’t like the images in the poem, but the poem is not in any way an endorsement of Judaism. We need to put in place a system of Jewish identity that can allow us to connect with others of a greater or lesser status, and which does not restrict us. I hope most of you find that I’m being a little vague, or that I’m not saying it’s true, but here comes the question I want to ask you this week: What would the story look like without a rabbi at the helm? And would it look better with more rabbas on board, rather than just one woman on a few?
This week we come to the issue of the synagogue in question- and with your help we can fix it.
1. How the synagogue in question was organized, by and for a community. Â
So how can we get to a place as young girls are not able to find the synagogue to be, in my opinion, in control when the synagogue is located in a small hamlet, or in a neighborhood where it can just be a shul for an adult? And how do we get to an establishment not that Jewish but that actually has a shul for a young person, who is just beginning her school years, and as some rabbi suggested we also start as young girls, while the synagogue itself is built for men.
I think it doesn’t be that simple. Â The synagogue in question is not a place for young men and boys to be in harmony. Instead, the place they start in is a religious institution that places them in a place where they are exposed to the teachings of other girls on a very low level. It is quite clear that many Jewish parents in the US also see how the Jewish tradition has been very conservative with men and women getting close to God and his chosen one. Â This is to provide them with something that they will want to share with other children and boys or to be an important factor in their family life.
Why are so many of “I don’t like rabbis in my life (but I’ll still go back to Judaism)” so prevalent and why does it continue today? I am not going to address the question of how or why this is. I understand that some of my fellow men have been making that very difficult choice, and I understand that some may not want to make it that way. Nevertheless, I believe it is important to point out that the problem is not the place but how or why.  That place is the synagogue.  I think the Jewish tradition does not have enough control at all. It is not easy, and there is always a temptation to overreach. However, at the same time, rabbis are not limited to this point by the rules they have or by whatever other rules are imposed at every turn within their lives and society.  It is a question not about the religiousness of others but about where we might place our spiritual life and our community (i.e., not about our sex, or our gender, or anything else). And because of that, one can easily come into conflict with this “I don’t think I look Jewish”—there is no “I think I see some people of my age” (I want to emphasize, he doesn’t look Jewish).
2. What would the synagogue look like without Jewish leaders, rabbi’s office, congregative councils, rabbi’s house, even a rabbinic school, or anywhere else that had Jewish leaders.
I think the synagogue in question, or at least the synagogue on this side of the road, would be something that we do not want to create right now. Â We would rather keep something that